The United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) were close to a deal on Wednesday on fielding 23 000 peacekeepers in Sudan’s violent Darfur region, but full deployment is not expected until next year at the earliest.
The so-called ”hybrid” UN-AU force is the culmination of two earlier stages allowing the United Nations to bolster 7 000 beleaguered African Union troops.
Sudan has still to agree to the large force, after it refused to have an operation controlled solely by the United Nations. Top UN and AU officials approved a revised plan, which the AU’s Peace and Security Committee and the UN Security Council are expected to endorse.
Should Sudan delay approval, the United States and Britain want to push for sanctions, including a no-fly zone over Darfur to help put an end to fighting that has uprooted more than two million people. Experts estimate 200 000 people have died.
In Heligendamm, Germany, United States President George Bush said the United States ”would consider” helping to enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur should the UN Security Council impose one.
”I want to see people helping Darfur by joining us and sending clearer and stronger messages to President [Omar al-]Bashir” of Sudan, Bush told reporters on the first day of a summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations.
But a majority of the 15-nation Security Council question expanding current mild sanctions against Khartoum, which the United States and Britain have been pushing for. No resolution has been distributed and it is doubtful that would happen before council members visit Sudan on June 17.
Sudan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lam Akol, told reporters in Washington via video conference that ”we reject the imposition of sanctions”. He said sanctions would harm the peace process as well as the Darfur people.
Akol, a former rebel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, is now part of Khartoum’s national unity government.
At the United Nations, peacekeeping officials are facing a number of problems, and a senior official briefing reporters said the hybrid force was not anticipated until next year.
He said the United Nations still does not have helicopters, transport planes, housing and water for the first two phases of support to the African Union, many of whose soldiers have not been paid for months.
Gloss over differences
Holding up the plan until this week was a dispute over command and control of the hybrid force, with both Sudan and the African Union objecting to wording that gave the United Nations, which pays for the operation, ultimate control.
In practice, a senior UN official said day to day operations would be managed by the African Union, but the United Nations could intervene if it disagrees.
”This is not easy. It is something new for both organisations,” the senior UN official said.
While the United Nations has agreed to African commanders, its proposal said more clarity was needed on command and control to satisfy UN troop-contributing nations.
But the new paper, obtained by reporters on Wednesday, softened language on UN command and control and added a provision from a document agreed by all sides in November that the UN would provide ”backstopping and control structures”.
The next step is for African Union and UN officials to explain the proposal to Sudan at a meeting in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on June 11-12.
Khartoum’s initial response will be relayed to the UN Security Council on June 13.
Meanwhile, in Darfur, arid camps housing those driven from their homes are full as more flee to the makeshift shelters to escape violence.
”A very visible consequence of the continued displacement is the swelling population of camps — many of which can no longer absorb any new arrivals,” UN spokesperson George Somerwill told reporters in Khartoum.
Non-Arab rebels took up arms in Darfur in early 2003, accusing the government of not heeding their plight. Khartoum armed some Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, who raped, killed and pillaged. But in the last year both Arab and non-Arab tribes have been fighting among themselves, shattering an earlier peace accord. – Reuters